


used to have all the answers

by pr_scatterbrain



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cold War, M/M, Winter Olympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:31:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7237378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/pseuds/pr_scatterbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“We could have been teammates,” Sidney tells Evgeni out of the blue. “If you were drafted."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>It takes Evgeni a second or two to understand. When he does, he rolls his eyes.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"I would have been Capital,” he tells Sidney, because the Capitals had the number one pick that year and the Penguins had the second. </i>
</p><p>A Winter Olympics au</p>
            </blockquote>





	used to have all the answers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brax/gifts).



> To brax - I hope you enjoy this. I also hope it's ok that I strayed a little from your first prompt ( _For mumblemumblehandwave reasons, Geno is drafted by the Caps, and he and Sid hate each other but don’t really hate each other._ ), and wrote this thing with a completely au take on Russian, Winter Olympics and hockey history (It's set at a hypothetical 2008 winter Olympics at Sion, Switzerland (they made a failed bid for the 2008 games)). But there is hand holding <3

 

 

 

 

Sion, Switzerland 2008

 

 

 

Team Russia arrives in Sion, Switzerland exactly on schedule.

“No thanks to you,” Nikolay Kulemin comments as they assemble on the tarmac.

Evgeni elbows him.

 

 

The arrival of the bulk of Team Russia on the same day is a coordinated effort. As a member of the National Ice Hockey team, Evgeni arrives on one of the first flights and he is in the foreground of the photographs being taken and footage being filmed on the airport tarmac. The spotlight isn’t exactly new, but it was never really meant to be his. That isn’t a secret, but that doesn’t mean he wants to acknowledge it.

Evgeni is used to the routine. He isn’t new to the team, or to the system under which they have always operated. He doubts he could be when he grew up within it. However this time, for the first time, he has an A on his jersey. It’s something that seems to always come up in interviews and during practices. He doesn’t need to be reminded. It isn’t something he could forget. Though somehow, it feels like he has to remind other people.

While waiting for their team bus, Evgeni pulls at his uniform and tries not to make it too obvious. The red and white down filled jacket he was outfitted with a few months previously keeps bunching up around his waist. He has gained a little muscle bulk since he was fitted for it. Not enough to require a new uniform, but just enough to stretch the seams of his jacket.

Their captain, Aleksey Morozov, stands at the edge of the group with Pavel Datsyuk and Sergei Fedorov. Talking quietly while they wait, Evgeni watches the way their posture seems to give a little. Maybe they aren’t exactly relaxed, but there is an innate confidence to their carriage and a sense of comfort they find speaking to each other. When Aleksey catches Evgeni watching, his gaze is perhaps more understanding that it should be. Waving Evgeni over, Aleksey makes space in the circle and in the conversation.

“We were discussing the schedule,” he says, catching Evgeni up in a way that doesn’t feel like a meaningless gesture.

Maybe Evgeni gained the spotlight through default, but Aleksy’s never made him feel like that.

Pavel – Pasha – nods. “Apparently there is word our practice time tomorrow has been shifted to accommodate Norway’s flights being delayed.”   

Evgeni tucks his chin under the thick seal fur collar of his coat. He doesn’t see why another countries misfortune should have any impact on them, but he doesn’t say that to them. Maybe he’ll complain to Nikolay later, but for now he tucks his hands into his pockets and tries to think ahead.

“What will that mean for us?”

“We get up earlier,” Aleksey says.

Evgeni nods. “I can go tell everyone.”

Aleksey shakes his head. “Wait until we’re on the bus.”

For the last few years, Aleksey has been the only captain their national team has known – the only one Evgeni has really known. It is sometimes strange to see him in the ordinary KHL season on SC Uritskogo. Usually they try and catch up every now and then. Mostly dinners are at his invitation. Though no longer a child, Evgeni still feels more than a little awestruck around him. It’s difficult to shake, perhaps harder now that Evgeni knows the kindness behind the records and gilded reputation which mark Aleksey as one of the greats of Russian hockey.

It is getting noisy on the tarmac. Another plane of athletes and officials arrives just as their coach comes over to tell them the bus is five minutes away. While Aleksey and starts passing out directions to gather their luggage and ready themselves to move, Evgeni goes to try and help. He is one of the youngest players on the team, and it makes him careful with his words. He is meant to be equals to his teammates, but he doesn’t much feel like that.

In the shuffle of bags and equipment and feet, Evgeni gets pulled towards the front of the group and ends up at the back of the bus. While the others slowly load, Evgeni finds his gaze drift to the jumble of athletes streaming off the newly arrived jet. Judging from their mix of uniforms which stand out amidst the stream of Russian red and white, they are from at least a dozen different countries. Evgeni can’t help but wonder where they flew from, and how they happened to all find themselves thrown together.

 

 

Team Russia arrives in Sion as the favourite for gold.

(At least that’s what Russian press reports).

 

 

Everything is scheduled. Everything is accounted for. Even Evgeni.

He arrives to practice on time not because of any individual effort, but that of his roommates who get and keep him moving. Mostly Sergei Gonchar who does it in a way that simultaneously allows Evgeni to be annoyed at him but ineffectually. Instead he grumbles over coffee and tucks his fur collar up so it covers his cold ears and some of his uncombed hair.

“Stop fussing,” Sergei says.

As teammates on the national team and on Metallurg back home in Magnitogorsk, Sergei has either been told or taken it upon himself to take Evgeni under his wing. Insultingly, he doesn’t seem bothered with Nikolay, their fellow Metallurg teammate. Despite the fact he and Evgeni grew up alongside each other, best friends and neighbours, Nikolay has somehow managed to create the illusion that he is the mature one. He isn’t but try telling that to Sergei. For the most part it isn’t something Evgeni minds, but nevertheless he makes a face at Sergei when he insists on sitting next to Evgeni on the bus to the arena. It’s a short trip given their team bus is given priority lanes. Sergei spends most of it being annoyingly wide awake and well informed about Martigny, where the ice hockey events are being held.

The arena at Martigny is uniformly clean, well-appointed and everything new in a way Evgeni makes sure not to appear visible unfamiliar with. Despite the fact their practice is meant to be closed, there are press milling inside and outside the arena. Only inside the locker room they have been allotted, Evgeni exhales.

While lacing up his skates, he finds his eye lingers on the Sion Olympic logo printed on the centre of the carpeted floor. The bright colours look startling new. Maybe they are the first team to ever set foot here. Evgeni wouldn’t be surprised.

Somehow, all the badgering and watch tapping turns out to be for naught.

“We’re early,” Evgeni says as they set out of the tunnel and find the ice occupied.  

“We aren’t,” Sergei tells him and he’s right.

The American team is late. They are still on the ice running through drills when Evgeni and his teammates appear. The way they take up space prickles. Some of Evgeni’s older teammates visably bristle. Sergei keeps Evgeni close, and Evgeni knows why. He does. In spite of that, he makes sure to stand as tall as he can, unfolding his shoulders and holding his chin up. He can take up space too. In his pads and bright red and white team uniform, he feels more than he is; more than his stats and averages, more than whatever reputation as a bully he earnt himself at Worlds a few months back.   

“They did this on purpose,” Nikolay mutters under his breath while they watch their coach argue with the American coach and various officials attempt to play interference.

Turning, Alexander – Sasha – Semin smiles faintly. “I doubt it.”

He’s probably right, but he is ignored.

Everyone always ignores Sasha. Evgeni tries not to. It isn’t his fault that Alexander Ovechkin did what he did. Just because Sasha maybe knew beforehand, didn’t mean he could have stop him. No one ever stopped Alex from doing what he wanted to do. Not even his mother.

On the ice, the American’s break up into groups to scrimmage.

Behind him, Evgeni hears a few sighs and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

For the first few days in Sion they practically had the ice to themselves. Then the NHL players started arriving to join their respective national teams and so did delays like this. It’s irritating and disrespectful.

Eventually the American’s cede the ice, but not before a gaggle of journalists have taken enough photographs to fill the sports pages of their newspapers. They will probably get a few interviews with the players too. Evgeni isn’t naïve. He knows what sells papers. He knows what the media wants to write.

Isn’t as if Evgeni has never travelled – some would say he has travelled widely – but Worlds was in Poland. Sion is different. 

 

 

(At least Vancouver didn’t win the bid to host the games. Thank god.)

 

 

There is a pattern to the athlete’s village. Between the end of practice and team dinner, Evgeni’s eyes follow the ebb and flow of people. So do his feet.

He ends up at a recreation room, scoffing at a pair of Canadian’s hustling Swedish snow boarders at the ping pong table. Evgeni only vaguely knows the Swedes, but everyone knows the Canadian’s. Or one of them. Sidney Crosby is taller in real life, and he isn’t a good winner. He smirks when he beats the Swedes. Evgeni decides that he likes him, and also how insulted he looks when Evgeni insults his weak serve.

“Your slapshot is weak too,” Evgeni tells him.

Sidney looks more insulted.

From the indignant expression on his face it is clear that he knows exactly who Evgeni is. 

“It wasn’t weak when he scored the OT goal winner on you guys at World Juniors,” Shea Weber notes evenly.

Evgeni prefers not to remember that.

Shea grins. “I do. I won a hundred bucks off that goal.”

Sidney’s expression changes again. Because his gaze has shifted from Evgeni to Shea, Evgeni reacts in a way that his friends would probably find utterly predictable. He challenges Sidney to a game and then ends up spending his entire afternoon playing table tennis with him. Neither of them are good losers. Best of three spirals into best of five, then seven.

The more games they play, the more Evgeni decides he likes Sidney.

Sidney has bright hazel eyes and messy hair and he is profoundly awkward. Evgeni didn’t expect that. From the interviews and games he had watched, Sidney always seemed sure of himself and his abilities. Maybe there were times he came across a little too intense, maybe even fixated on hockey, but Evgeni could understand that. In person, Evgeni realises that most of that is media training.  

Evgeni has media training too. His agent, his coach and the government have spent a lot of time and effort attempting to make it stick. Some of it has. Some of it hasn’t.

He is nineteen and he isn’t his country. Neither is Sidney.

(Both of them know better to say that aloud).

 

 

Evgeni kisses Sidney after they are kicked off the table tennis tables.

Outside the recreation room, Sidney mentions something about a nap and Evgeni walks back to his apartment with him. Technically Sidney doesn’t invite him, but they spend most of the walk arguing about the last game that neither of them notices that Evgeni follows Sidney into the Canadian section of the village rather than breaking off to walk back to the Russian apartments.

Evgeni doesn’t plan to kiss Sidney, but he wants to.

He realises that when they are alone in Sidney’s room, and it makes him smile because Sidney is ridiculous.

Sidney makes a ridiculous face too, when Evgeni kisses him. His hands hover mid-air and his breathing stops and Evgeni likes having an effect on people (especially on people who have an effect on him). When Evgeni touches his neck, Sidney trembles and Evgeni’s blood thrums in his veins.

It takes Sidney more than a beat to start kissing back. He isn’t much good at it, but Evgeni doesn’t mind. He thinks maybe no one has kissed Sidney enough, or maybe at all. Probably the latter; Evgeni remembers him at World Juniors

“I missed you in Poland,” Evgeni tell him, not really knowing why.

Sidney blushes, but rather than giving him a chance to respond, Evgeni kisses him again and again and he is smiling when he does.

“You should have come to Worlds,” he tells Sidney as he works his hands under the synthetic white and red jacket Team Canada has been outfitted in. “You could have seen me beat your team in person.”

Sidney huffs, but his stomach muscles jump when Evgeni finally touches his warm skin.

“I was busy,” Sidney manages to retort. “with playoffs.”

Evgeni laughs. “So busy. You exit in second round.”

Sidney bites when Evgeni tries to kiss him again.

 

 

Everyone has affairs at international events.

(Or at least, that’s what Evgeni sees his teammates do all the time).

 

 

Sure, there are rule about fraternizing with athletes from other countries. In practice, Evgeni knows the only athletes that the Russia government and media will care about him fraternizing with are Americans.

Sidney isn’t an American.

Evgeni tells Nikolay that.

Nikolay gives Evgeni a rather dubious look.

Evgeni rolls his eyes. “Canadian’s aren’t our rivals anymore.”

“People at home have a longer memory than you.”

“They are at home,” Evgeni says simply.

So are Canadian’s two top defence men and half of their first line due to a combination of injuries and mumps. Apparently it’s going through the NHL league. Mumps that is.

Nikolay rolls his eyes when Evgeni jokes about that.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I will kiss Sidney with a closed mouth.”

 

 

People call Sidney Crosby the best hockey player in the world.

(People in Russia don’t.)

 

 

For someone who is the future of Canadian hockey as well as NHL hockey and all that entails, Sidney somehow always seems to have time for Evgeni. Between their various team commitments, Evgeni bullies his way into Sidney’s space, and he sees how Sidney lets him. There is something gratifying about the way Sidney leans into Evgeni’s side when Evgeni steps close to talk to him over the bustling noise of the Olympic village, and the way he seems completely blind to the way pretty ice dancers and speed skaters (and most of his National team as a whole) look at him with intention.

Evgeni likes it. (He likes Sidney.) 

“More insults?” Sidney asks after his team plays America.

“Pretty goal,” Evgeni tells him, because it was.

“It wasn’t.”

No. It wasn’t. It was ugly and hard won and Evgeni loved it. He loved how Sidney forced the tide to turn, if only for that one play. The way Sidney ducked and skated around America’s top talents made Evgeni’s heart stutter and then stop when Sidney took his chance on the steel-trap goalie.

“It was,” Evgeni counters and they end up watching replays in Sidney’s room.

After the third replay of Sidney’s goal Evgeni manages to find, Sidney tries to tackle the remote from his hand. Despite his longer arms, Evgeni ends up pinned by him. Victorious, Sidney crows and uses locker room insults that sound like something he picked up from the guys who kept pranking him at juniors. Flushed, with bright eyes, Sidney is nothing at all like Evgeni imagined and because he doesn’t play fair he rocks his hips up against Sidney’s. Taken off guard, Sidney’s breathe catches in his throat.

“Yeah?” Evgeni asks.

Sidney bites his bottom lip. Evgeni feels Sidney’s dick hardening against his own, and inside his chest, Evgeni heart is beating rather loudly.

“Okay,” Sidney says. His voice sounds shaken, and his hands are a little clammy when Evgeni laces their fingers together.

“Sid?” Evgeni double checks, his voice maybe a little quieter.

Sidney’s eyes are very dark and his mouth is so pretty. He is so pretty, Evgeni thinks and want fills him. Sidney’s everything is so pretty.

Sidney nods. “Yeah.”

They are so close that Evgeni can see exactly how long Sidney’s bracken brown eyelashes are.

“Me too,” he tells Sidney, because Evgeni can’t remember wanting anything or anyone else more.

Neither of them knows exactly what they are doing. It’s a bit rushed and awkward. With thighs spread open and Sidney’s hands pinning his arms, all Evgeni can do is rock hips against Sidney’s and greedily press his mouth to Sidney’s. The seam of his pants rubs against his aching cock, and he wants everything all at once. Sidney’s fingers flex and the shallow rasp of his breathing is the only thing Evgeni can hear over the thrum of his heartbeat.

This could be enough. This could be more than enough.

But Evgeni has always wanted more. Always.

Sidney’s grip falters when Evgeni pulls at his uniform. The seamless tee Sidney is wearing is twisted around his torso, but it’s easy to push his fleece lined pants down his hips. When Sidney pulls back a little to kick them off, Evgeni takes the opportunity to strip as quickly as he can. Somehow he makes Sidney laugh, and Evgeni likes that.

“Come back here,” he tells Sidney once he gets his shirt off, and with one hand he twists his fingers into Sidney’s hair and holds him where he wants him.

Evgeni thinks he must have had ideas about things he wanted. Yet with Sidney naked and stretched over him, Evgeni can’t think. With his dick pressed into the sweat dampened crease of Sidney’s hips, Evgeni mostly kisses him until he can’t really think. The weight of Sidney’s body on his is a heady thing. He likes it so much. He likes how Sidney’s hands shift and come to find his neck, his chest, his waist and his hips; never staying in one place for too long.

Evgeni’s hands feel clumsy when he touches Sidney. Licking his palm, Evgeni wrapped it around both of them, he strokes them a little, trying to figure out a rhythm but mostly trying to figure out what Sidney likes. When his thumb catches a spot that makes Sidney’s breath catch, Evgeni’s own cock jerks in reaction. He doesn’t quite find the right rhythm; not when he keeps thrusting his hips into his fist and so does Sidney. However that doesn’t seem to matter.

It really doesn’t take much for either of them.

After only a few more minutes, Sidney comes, bitting into Evgeni’s shoulder with a muffled sound that might be his name. When he does, Evgeni follows almost immediately. The sharp flush of pain pushing him over the edge. Flushed and a little embarrassed, Evgeni buries his face into Sidney’s chest and tries to breathe. It takes a while for his heart to slow and his breathing to steady.

He doesn’t notice when Sidney lacing his fingers through his, but at some point Sidney does. It grounds Evgeni in a way he doesn’t know how to articulate – only that it does.  

Sex is… sex can be a lot sometime.

 

 

Afterwards, Sidney curls close and Evgeni feels himself drift a little. Maybe he could have napped for a bit if Sidney didn’t speak. 

“We could have been teammates,” Sidney tells Evgeni out of the blue. “If you were drafted.”

It takes Evgeni a second or two to understand. When he does, he makes a face.

“I would have been Capital,” he tells Sidney, because the Capitals had the number one draft pick that year and the Penguins had the second. “I would be number one pick too, like you.”

Sidney rolls his eyes.

Feeling particularly pleased with himself, Evgeni presses a kiss to the corner of Sidney’s bitten mouth.

 

 

(No one willingly talks about Alexander Ovechkin. Not after what he did.)

 

 

In the first round, Team Russia faces Team Hungary.

They demolish them. Completely and utterly.

19-1

In the locker room, Evgeni wraps his arms around Aleksey and everyone is laughing and yelling and ready to get right back onto the ice for round two and round three and why not round four too? Why not hold the gold medal game now? They can face anyone. They feel unstoppable and unmatchable.

“That has to be a new record,” Evgeni tells Sasha, colliding into him.

Sasha catches him, and right now he is smiling to. Maybe he only got a few minutes of ice time, but two of those goals had come from assists he gave Evgeni.

“Best winger,” Evgeni adds. “Best, best winger.”

Sasha ducks his head, and Evgeni hugs him close, pressing a kiss to his sweaty blonde hair.

Evgeni says the same thing to the press when they are allowed to speak to the team. Well. More or less. They don’t really care. Their stories are probably already written. All they need is one or two appropriate quotes. Evgeni is expected to provide them.

Evgeni is nineteen.

Evgeni is the youngest alternate captain his country has ever named.

Evgeni earnt it.

(Evgeni is expected to keep earning it).

 

 

(Evgeni knows what’s expected of him and his team. There are no hopes for a gold medal, there are expectations of one.) 

 

 

That evening Evgeni celebrates with his team, and flirts with half the bar. Most of the people in it are representing Russia in some event or another. Some already have gold medals around their necks. Then when Sergei isn’t looking, Evgeni slips outside and calls Sidney. More stupid than drunk, he has to close his eyes when Sidney answers. His voice is sleep rough and Evgeni has to know if he saw the game.

“I did,” Sidney tells him. “We all did.”

This makes Evgeni laugh; delighted by the image of Team Canada crowding around a TV to watch them triumph.

“Did you learn anything?” he asks.

Sidney hums. “Yeah. No one on your line likes to go into the boards after the puck.”

“Our passes were too good. Hungary didn’t touch the puck.” he grins. “We didn’t have to chase after it once.”

“You will with us,” Sidney promises, but his tone of voice isn’t at all serious.

“Where are you?” Evgeni asks.

“My bathroom.”

“Can I see you?” Evgeni asks; his mind filled with thought.

“No,” Sidney snorts. “Shea’s here. We’ve got a game tomorrow. We need to sleep.”

And that Evgeni can mostly understand. He sighs.

“Tomorrow we both celebrate.”

Because he knows Canada can bounce back in their second game – they are only playing Finland.

Sidney makes a pained sound.

“It’s not jinx,” Evgeni tells him, promises. “I know how good you are and how bad they are. All they have Teemu Selänne.”

“Yeah,” Sidney says sarcastically. “Just him.”

“You’re better,” Evgeni tells him.

Sidney huffs.

Evgeni’s heart does that thing it’s been doing again.

“You’re almost as good at me,” he adds, and that does it – Sidney laughs.

 

 

Against the odds, Canada does win, if only in over time.

“Still counts,” Evgeni tells Sidney when they catch up afterwards.

Sidney makes a face.

 

 

They end up in his room again.

“Shea out tonight?” Evgeni asks, because he thinks he likes to tease Sidney.

“Shea owes me one.”

Evgeni saw the game – all of the team owes Sidney one.

Backing Sidney against his door, Evgeni uses his height to box Sidney in. Sidney lets him. Something about that gets to Evgeni in a way he doesn’t know how to express; only that it undoes something deep inside him.

Because he can, Evgeni doesn’t linger on that. Instead he kisses Sidney, and Sidney tilts his face up and kisses back. His mouth is hot, but his skin has a chill to it when Evgeni touches him. It hasn’t been more than an hour since the game ended. Sidney’s hair is wet against his neck, and it’s stained the collar of his Team Canada shirt and jacket. Evgeni caught him as he got back to the village and stole him before he’s teammates noticed.

Earlier, after Evgeni saw the OT goal that won the game, he found himself in his tiny bathroom fingering himself open with cold lube. The awkwardness of that is worth it, when Sidney goes so still when his fingers touch the slickness between Evgeni's arse cheeks while groping him. Sidney exhales. His eyes are huge and Evgeni grins a sly grin.

“Want to?” he asks.

“You sure?”

Evgeni nods. He wants this. He wants Sidney.

There is a beat where Sidney is so still, then, all of a sudden he is a flurry of motion. Breaking away, he grasps handfuls of Evgeni’s t-shirt in a white knuckle grip that halts Evgeni. Before Evgeni can register or comprehend his reaction, Sidney haphazardly starts attempting to pull the jersey shirt up and over his head. Somehow the sleeves get tangled and twisted around Evgeni’s wrists.

“Fuck,” Sidney swears.

Flustered, he stretches forward to try to try and untangling them. As he does, Evgeni captures Sidney’s mouth. Halting his progress, Sidney’s mouth opens a little against Evgeni’s, and he moans when Evgeni tongue strokes his. With Sidney pinned and with his own wrists constrained, all Evgeni can do is kiss Sidney. And he does. At each other’s mercy, Evgeni gasps and moans and kisses Sidney back as best he can, kisses until Evgeni can’t merely kiss him anymore.

Twisting his hands, he tries to untangle his t-shirt himself.

“I’m helping,” he tells Sidney, when Sidney catches on. “I want to touch too.”

With hands free, Evgeni doesn’t waste any time. Kicking off his pants and wriggling out of the rest of his uniform, he then goes to work on Sidney. Somehow Evgeni manages not to elbow him – just, but he does make Sidney laugh which makes Evgeni’s heart do things inside his chest. He forgets about that when he gets Sidney out of his boxer briefs. The elastic has left marks on Sidney’s hips and strong thighs and because he can, Evgeni drops to his knees because tracing them with his fingertips isn’t enough, he wants to kiss them. When he does, Sidney gasps and bites his lip and Evgeni feels breathless and stupid.

Sidney has a gorgeous cock, and Evgeni kisses that too. At the first touch of Evgeni's lips, Sidney moans.

“Bed,” Evgeni decides, pulling back before he loses himself

Getting to his feet, he pushes Sidney towards his bed. His bed or Shea’s bed; Evgeni isn’t thinking that clearly. He doesn't care. Once they are there, Evgeni fingertips find the red marks again, unable to stop himself, and his mouth finds Sidney’s. Feeling like teasing, Evgeni lightly sucks on Sidney’s tongue. It’s a mimic of what he didn’t let himself do to Sidney’s cock, and unconsciously he rocks his cock against Sidney’s.

Sidney hands shake a little when he touches him; Evgeni doesn’t mind, but he thinks Sidney does.

 “I haven’t –“ Sidney starts to say at one point.

“Me either,” Evgeni admits, looking down and meeting his eyes. “Not this.”

Evgeni’s English is okay. Maybe good. He doesn’t always understand everything, but he understands Sidney now.

“I don’t like a lot of people,” Sidney says, like he needs to explain or have an excuse for not having done this, or perhaps anything, before. He doesn’t.

“I like you,” Evgeni tells him.

Sidney is quiet for a while.

“I like you to,” he says finally.

Evgeni –

There should be something terrifying about how easily Evgeni allows Sidney to press so close. Maybe there is. Maybe Evgeni should be frightened. He isn’t, though. He says that aloud. Somehow, Sidney blushes a little more, but his hands are a little steadier this time around when he touches Evgeni. Settling between Evgeni’s thighs, Sidney cautiously touches his dick, thumbing the pre-cum wet tip.

Evgeni swears.

Turned on, but maybe not quite as bold as Evgeni felt back in his bathroom, he closes his hand around Sidney’s and shows him how to touch him. He knows he is blushing, and he knows he is making all kind of stupid noises, and he knows he doesn’t really need Sidney to finger him, but Evgeni’s breathing hard as he shows Sidney how to do that too. Arching shamelessly against Sidney, Evgeni rocks back against Sidney’s fingers.

Sidney’s eyes are so dark and his focus on Evgeni is so utter and complete. Maybe that turns Evgeni on as much as anything else.

“Ready,” he tells Sidney after three fingers.

Sidney’s breathe hitches. “Yeah?”

Evgeni nods.

Removing his fingers, Sidney lines himself up. Pressing inside Evgeni, Sidney moves slowly. With care – Evgeni can tell. With one hand on Evgeni’s knee and the other on his hip, Sidney is hardly breathing. His fingers dig into Evgeni’s skin. And it takes a while for Evgeni to move. As hard as Sidney’s hands are grasping him, Evgeni’s fingers are gripping the wrinkled sheets on Sidney’s bed with a white knuckled grip. Exhaling slowly, Evgeni shifts hips a little as he gets used to the feeling of having Sidney inside him. And Sidney – he is waiting and trying to breath and his eyes are so, so bright.

“Move,” he tells Sidney, when he is ready.

Thrusting his hips, Sidney pulls his cock out and pushes in. His movements are unsteady, and unpractised, but equally so are Evgeni’s. Experimentally, he rocks back against Sidney. It a bit awkward until Sidney changes angles and then it’s sort of vaguely good and then it’s better when Evgeni tilts his hips. Reading him, Sidney’s grip is so sure; without stopping, he grabs Evgeni and easily supports his weight. The strength in Sidney – in his arms and shoulders and thighs – undoes Evgeni. Reaching for his dick, he squeezes.

Writhing, Evgeni manages to bring his knees up to Sidney’s waist. Blood thrumming and whimpering as Sidney’s cock drags against his prostate, Evgeni bites at Sidney’s mouth, his jaw, the muscles in his neck. From the taunt tension in Sidney’s body, Evgeni knows he has to be getting close. Then Sidney’s hand is on Evgeni’s dick and he strokes Evgeni ruthlessly.

Coming in a rush, Evgeni gasps and swears and just manages to hold onto Sidney.

“Is okay,” he manages to tell Sidney when he stops moving.

Unsure and breathing hard, Sidney whimpers and Evgeni repeats himself. It is ok. Maybe it’s too much having Sidney keep going, but Evgeni wants this – him. Evgeni wants Sidney, and with his nerves blown, Evgeni whimpers as Sidney moves. What rhythm the found together is lost; and when Sidney comes, Evgeni holds him as his strength leaves him and he collapse.

 

 

As the mix of sweat, lube and cum cools on his skin, Evgeni curls closer to Sidney.

“Was it?” he asks, or tries to.

Sidney nods. “Yeah.”

And Evgeni thinks Sidney understands him too.

 

 

The following day Russia faces Germany and Canada takes on Switzerland.

Russia wins by two.

Canada and Switzerland goes into overtime. This time Sidney doesn’t win it for them.

(They win the next time though, and the one after that).

 

 

The winter games seem to move so quickly. Between hockey games that his team win and keep winning, Evgeni manages to divide his time between cheering for various other Russian athletes competing in different events, and running into Sidney in the village. That pretence doesn’t last long – and sometimes Sidney finds him too. They even exchange a few words at the Martigny arena while Evgeni’s team is finishing up practice and Sidney is early for his.

The press apparently get a few shots of that; Russian and Canadian.  

Sidney doesn’t mention it, and neither does Evgeni.

(Everyone else does.)

“You’re such an idiot,” Nikolay says more than once.

Sasha though, doesn’t say a word.

When he catches Evgeni sneaking into their apartment right as they are scheduled to leave for practice, he rolls his eyes. With a bemused look on his face, he hands Evgeni his travel cup of coffee and does up his jacket.

“Don’t take it off in public,” he makes Evgeni promise.

It’s only later, when Evgeni is in their team locker room getting changed, Evgeni realised he accidentally threw on Sidney’s Team Canada shirt in the dark.

Glancing over at Sasha, Evgeni mouths  _‘thank you.’_

Sasha rolls his eyes again, but he’s smiling faintly.

 

 

Because of his NHL schedule, Sidney missed the opening ceremony, and he makes Evgeni tell him about it in detail. In return Evgeni makes him tell him about the NHL. He wants to know everything.

“Everything?” Sidney asks, settling back against the headboard of his bed.  

Evgeni makes a face. “Skip Capitals gossip.”

“I thought you and Ovechkin were friends?”

Evgeni rolls his eyes. “He stole my team.”

Sidney snorts. “You know, Ovechkin told me to watch out for you.”

Evgeni doesn’t know how to take that – from Sidney or Sanja.

On the TV screen there are more replays on various events. Evgeni isn’t really watching. Slipping his hand under Sidney’s shirt to touch his warm skin, Evgeni decides to change to subject.

“We would have been rivals,” he tells Sidney.

Evgeni can see it. He would be the face of the Capitals, and he would be Sidney’s worst nightmare. Everyone would talk about them. They would have had the biggest rivalry the league had ever seen. They would have fans on the edge of their seat each time their teams faced off against each other.

Sidney smiles a little. “We’re rivals now.”

Evgeni snorts.

Canada isn’t anyone’s rival this year.

“You would hate me more than all the Flyers,” Evgeni tells him.

Sidney shakes his head. “I still think you would have been a Pen, like me.”

Evgeni rolls his eyes. “This again?”

Sidney laughs. “The Pens are the best.”

There is something so striking about Sidney. Evgeni feels his heart do such stupid things inside his chest.

“The two of us,” he muses.

“Yeah,” Sidney smiles. “You know you could –”

And Evgeni stops him, shaking his head.

Sidney looks away. “Ovechkin came to the NHL.”

Alexander Ovechkin; the white elephant of the games.

Evgeni feels something inside him twist unpleasantly.

“You could too,” Sidney says, his voice quiet and earnest. “I could talk to Mario – fuck, any team in the league would want you.”

And it’s all too much.

Shaking his head, Evgeni tries to smile, tries to deflect, tries to get the conversation back to something where he had an even footing. But when he tries to play it off as something funny, Sidney seems to shrink and Evgeni doesn't want that.

 

 

Their teams play each other.

It doesn’t go well for either of them.

Evgeni’s coach has trained them for the physicality they were sure to face, and the Canadian team was ready to match their tactics. Despite everything, it’s a close game.

Sidney is easily the best player on his team.

One great player can change a game, but they can’t change every game. There are limits.  

 

 

Canada ends up playing the Czech Republic in the bronze medal game.

After it, their argument doesn’t seem to matter. Not when Sidney is quiet when Evgeni finds him in the Olympic village. There is something soft in his eyes with Evgeni touches the medal around his neck.

“Not bad,” he comments. There is something achingly vulnerable about his voice.  

Evgeni nods.

Evgeni walks him back to his room. When he goes there, he doesn’t intend to stay, but he doesn’t want to leave.

Together they lie on Sidney’s bed.

Sleep doesn’t come easy. After a while, Sidney gives up on it and curls close. In the darkness his mouth finds Evgeni’s. There is something a little desperate about him, maybe something worn too thin.

“Can we?” Sidney asks.

Evgeni nods.

He spills a lot of lube on the sheets when he fingers Sidney while blowing him, and then more when he jacks his dick before pressing inside Sidney. It isn’t so awkward anymore. After only nearly two weeks they know each other now. Evgeni likes that. He likes how he knows how to touch Sidney, how to make him blush and whimper and fall apart. He loves the strength in Sidney’s thighs, and how he can hold Evgeni and fold him and fuck him. He likes everything.

Afterwards Evgeni presses close and tries to catch his breath.

“Do you remember World Juniors?” Sidney asks.

Evgeni remembers Sidney. He remembers Sidney at every international tournament they faced each other in over the years.

He nods. “You made Sanja cry.”

Sidney mouth twitches. “Do you remember what you said?”

Evgeni goes still.

“Did you mean it?” Sidney asks. “When you said you wanted to play in the NHL?”

There is a short answer and a long answer.

Evgeni doesn’t need to say either. There was a reason he in particularly had had so much media training in the interim between then and now. There was also a reason his devotion to learning English was something that predated said media training.

“You did,” Sidney concludes, reading the silence.

Evgeni ducks his head.

It doesn’t matter now. It didn’t matter then either.

 

 

(“I wish you had been drafted to the Pens,” Sidney says at some point during the night.

Evgeni doesn’t answer.

He can’t. Not when all he wants to say is, ‘me too.')

 

 

Team Russia is going to win gold against America.

(Team Russia has to win gold).

 

 

Evgeni is a great player on a team of great players.

They try, they fight, they… lose.

 

 

One by one his teammates peel off the stand while the American anthem is playing. At first, Evgeni doesn’t understand what is happening. Until he does. Until it is him and a tiny handful of his teammates left and the crowd hates them all the more.

He wonders how the press will paint it. (He doesn’t care).

No one notices when Evgeni disappears. But then, no one is really left when he gets back into the locker room.

For all that Team Russia runs to a precise schedule, Evgeni misses his team bus. Maybe, for the first time since arriving in Sion, he’s late. Or maybe it left early. He wouldn’t blame his teammates. Standing around waiting for alternative transportation to be organised while he can hear the cheers of the crowd make him ache so deeply.

In the locker room, he sits in his stall and tries not to think. He feels numb. Nikolay and Sasha are still in the showers trying to drown themselves or just the sound of the arena. A few stalls down, Evgeni vaguely overhears Sergei arguing with someone on the phone. His voice is hoarse from yelling to be heard over the rambunctious crowd. There were times during the game when Evgeni could hardly hear anything.    

Time blurs around the edges.

When Evgeni finally gets back to the village, he goes to Sidney because, because, because…

He just goes to Sidney. Shea opens the door when Evgeni gets there.

“No fucking,” he says, letting Evgeni into the relative quiet of their apartment. “We’re flying out tomorrow.”

Behind him, he hears Sidney ask, “Is that Zhenya?”

Then Sidney is there.

There is something so fond in Sidney’s eyes, and something sure. Evgeni can’t look at him.

Leading Evgeni to his room, Sidney is gentle when he touches Evgeni.

Stripping him down to his boxers, Sidney pulls Evgeni into bed with him. His bedding still warm to the touch, and Evgeni inhales and exhales slowly as Sidney gets into the bed next to him. With care, Sidney arranges the blankets around them. The bed is a small double. Over the last two weeks they managed to fool around in it, but now lying curled up in it together makes Evgeni realise how small it is.

For the longest time, Evgeni focuses on Sidney’s slow breathing. Across the room, Shea starts snoring softly. Closing his eyes, Evgeni tries to – he doesn’t know. The only thing he can really do is bite his lip when Sidney settles against his back, his body strong and warm and the only thing Evgeni can feel.

“I won’t hurt you,” he says.

It isn’t a promise. If Evgeni could listen, maybe it might sound like something else. On any other day, he probably could figure it out. But not today. Not now. Turning in Sidney’s arms, Evgeni kisses Sidney and bites at his lips and his strong shoulders and gasps when Sidney pins him down and presses his face into a pillow when Sidney fingers him open.

“Now,” Evgeni tells him after one finger.

Sidney shakes his head. “Wait, Zhenya.”

And somehow it’s that – the name he must have overhead someone else use – that breaks the camel’s back. It happens without him noticing. His breathing catches in his throat and he starts blinking and then he clings to Sidney and can’t let go.

Sidney holds him tightly while he weeps and Evgeni knows he doesn’t deserve it. Not when Sidney walked away with a bronze medal and Evgeni is acting like this over a silver one.

(Evgeni doesn’t care).

 

 

In the early hours of the morning they kiss and they kiss and they kiss and Sidney fingers him open again and Evgeni holds him close when Sidney presses inside.

He has to bite his lip to stay quiet so he doesn't wake Shea, but he doesn’t care.

It’s fumbling and good and Evgeni holds on as long as he can before coming.

 

 

(Evgeni leaves Sidney’s apartment without his medal. He doesn’t care.)

 

 

A few hours later, Evgeni is in the airport with most of Team Russia, and at least four or five dozen athlete’s from other countries all waiting to fly out of Sion as quickly as possible. Originally, the plan had been to stay for the closing ceremony. Those plans all changed. It’s chaotic. It doesn’t seem like anyone knows exactly when their flight is, or if they will be flying out together. No one seems to care. There are rumours their coach and the assistant coaches flew out after the game. No one has seen them since. (No one has looked for them).

“Did you know?” he finds himself asking Sasha while they wait.

In his hand is his passport. Unable to settle, Evgeni scratches the gold type and insignia on the cover. He was issued a new one for the games. His last one had filled over the summer when the national team travelled to a specialist camp in the Swiss Alps to do altitude training.

On the other side of Evgeni, Nikolay and Sergei have both tensed up, and Evgeni knows he shouldn’t ask Sasha. He does. But he has. It’s unfair and they are in public and what does it matter now, in the aftermath of falling short in the gold medal game.

Sasha shrugs.

They have been friends for a long time, as long as they had been friends with Alexander Ovechkin.

If Evgeni’s honest, he knows Sasha was always a better friend to them than either Evgeni or Alexander ever were to him.

“Everyone knew,” Sasha says in that way of his, and everyone did.

Most of Russia blames Sasha anyway.

 

 

(When Evgeni begins to restlessly flip through his empty passport pages, Sasha closes his hand over Evgeni’s.

Evgeni looks down at their hands and –

Sasha was the only one who actually believed that Alexander would defect.

Sasha didn't stop him.)

 

 

The airport is chaotic. No one notices one or two or three athletes getting up and going for a walk through the airport to stretch their legs…

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find/follow me on [tumblr](http://www.pr-scatterbrain.tumblr.com) if you want <3


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